The Spine

The introduction of a national health database in the UK is being carried out by a typically wasteful private finance initiative. Total data transparency may be good for corporations and security obsessed governments, but what does it mean for the recipients of "joined-up care"? [more]

Shopping town USA

Victor Gruen, the Cold War, and the shopping mall

Victor Gruen's "shopping towns" were supposed to strengthen civic life and alleviate women's lives. But within a decade they had become the architectural expression of the policy of gender segregation underlying the US postwar consumer utopia. [Lithuanian version added] [more]

The magic of debt, or Amortize this!

Today we don't feel guilty about incurring debts, just the opposite -- indebtedness is the entry price of being a good citizen, pulling more and more of us into the global financial system. [more]

Capital climes

Today, an Indian child consumes one ninetieth of the energy of her American counterpart. Such comparisons discredit the consensus that it is simply the mass activity of "man" which is responsible for global warming. [German version added] [more]

Drowning by numbers

The non-reproduction of New Orleans

After the actual hurricane that hit New Orleans in late August 2005 came the second hurricane of neo-liberal looting. The vacuum left by the evacuation of the working-class population and the storm’s destruction of infrastructure produced the dream conditions for economic "restructuring". [more]